Every Day is Not Your Birthday: Stop Eating Cake

This is an offensive rant post. Please do not read if you are easily offended and love cake.

As a fitness professional, I participate in and overhear many conversations about eating. Many people claim to want to change their diets and are curious about what my collegues and I eat. Often as I describe my intake, I get wierd looks and grossed out reactions. I want to clear something up: that is offensive, lets get that out of the way. I don’t cringe when I hear your story of the pastries and suger laden coffee you had for breakfast or that “healthy all fruit smothie” chased down by a bowl of cereal, so please don’t blatantly disrespect my food choices.

Another common response I get from people is, “but I don’t like that food.” Or, “that sounds gross.” Another of my favorties is, “that’s wierd.” First, I don’t care. Second, of course you don’t like it and it’s wierd. You eat what you like and that has you in the spot you are in right now: unhappy with your weight and energy levels. It’s fine if you like those foods and also fine if you continue eating them. You can stay exactly how you are. I’m not going to tell anyone there is anything wrong with that. However those responses are unacceptable from the context of the question “what can I do to lose weight?”

It’s ironic how much criticism I receive from the people who have absolutely no clue what they are talking about. The simple fact is that if you have the desire to lose weight, your breakfast can no longer be sweet. And what you are currently doing is wrong. So just admit that rather than defending it or blindly rejecting options you have never even tried.

You can’t eat cake for breakfast anymore. That went out the window years ago, along with your insulin sensitivity (that was a joke for nutrition nerds). The most important thing to remember on the road to health and fitness results is every day is not your birthday. Therefor most of your meals should not taste like or have the same ingredients as cake. If you want to eat cake all the time, then you don’t actually want to lose weight. Bagels are cake. Scones are cake. Toast is cake. All fruit smoothies are cake. Donuts are cake. Cereal is cake. low fat yogurt is cake. Danishes, pretzels, pancakes are all cake! Anything that is not primarily protein and fat and fiber is cake.

If you don’t “like greens”, then you will stay the way you are when you don’t eat greens. If you don’t like eggs and veggies, you will stay the same as when you eat breakfast that doesn’t contain eggs and veggies. You’re likes and dislikes inevitably shape your current state. That means you are going to have to do some things you don’t like and are not used to, in order to make a change. Eventually, you will like these new food choices. At some point you will not desire cake for breakfast. Until then you will have to learn to like the foods that slim people eat. It’s as simple as that.

As a side bar: stop eating so much. You’re not Micheal Phelps, you don’t need “carbs for energy”

There are no tricks and secrects or special potions that will allow you to continue eating cake for breakfast and lose weight. If you are not thin, you do not know how to be thin. If you want to be thin, the ideas you come up with on how to do so will always fail. This is obvious becuase otherwise you wouldn’t be asking me what I ate for breakfast, then scoffing at it essentially because it is different than what you do.

Please back away from the cake. Eat what I tell you to eat. And if you choose not to do that, please don’t criticize my food choices and complian that, “you wouldn’t like that.”